You know the pattern by now. It builds at the base of your skull sometime after lunch, creeps up behind your eyes, and settles into a tight band around your head. You take something for it. You get through the afternoon. And then it happens again on Thursday.
At some point "I get headaches" stops being a thing that happens to you and starts being a thing about you. You've stopped mentioning it. There's a bottle in your desk, one in your car, and one in the kitchen drawer.
Here's the part most people never get told: a lot of recurring headaches don't start in the head at all. They start in the neck. And a neck is something we can actually look at, measure, and do something about.
Many recurring headaches — especially the tight-band tension kind and the ones that start at the base of the skull — come from stiff joints and irritated nerves at the top of the neck. That's treatable. At Landmark we find out whether that's your situation using digital X-rays and a nervous system scan, then treat it with a low-force, instrument-delivered adjustment as our primary method — plus Cervi-Trac decompression if a disc or a pinched nerve in your neck is behind it, and shockwave therapy when the muscles around your neck and shoulders are part of it.
Migraines are more complicated, and we don't claim to cure them. Some people find neck tension is one of their triggers and that easing it helps. We'll tell you honestly, after we look, whether we think we can help you.
Why a headache would start in your neck
The top of your neck is a busy place. The joints there are small, they move a lot, and the nerves that supply the back of your head, your scalp, and the area behind your eyes all pass through the neighborhood.
When those top joints stiffen up and stop moving the way they should, the muscles around them tighten to compensate, and the nerves running through that area get irritated. Your brain doesn't report that as "my neck hurts." It reports it as a headache — often at the base of the skull, often spreading up and over one side, sometimes landing behind an eye.
There's even a name for the ones that clearly work this way: cervicogenic headaches, which just means headaches coming from the neck. But the tidy categories matter less than the practical point. If your headache has a source in your neck, treating the neck is treating the headache. If it doesn't, we should find that out early rather than adjusting you for three months and hoping.
The everyday version of this in Waco looks pretty ordinary. It's the desk at work and the laptop at home. It's the commute down I-35 with your shoulders up around your ears. It's grading papers, looking down at a phone, sleeping wrong on a pillow that gave up two years ago, or carrying a toddler on one hip. None of it is dramatic. It just adds up, and it lands in the same few inches at the top of your spine.
The headaches we see most — and which ones we can help
Tension headaches. The tight band. Pressure across the forehead and temples, both sides, dull rather than sharp, worse the longer the day goes. These are the most common kind we see, and they're the ones most likely to trace back to the neck and shoulders. This is where chiropractic care tends to do its best work.
Headaches that start at the base of the skull. They begin in one spot at the back — often the same spot every time — and travel up and over, usually on one side. Turning your head or holding one position can set them off. When someone describes this to us, the top of the neck is the first place we look.
Headaches after a car accident. A wreck on Valley Mills or I-35 doesn't have to be serious to leave your neck stiff and your head aching for weeks afterward. Headaches are one of the most common things people come to us with after a collision, sometimes starting days later. That's its own situation with its own paperwork, and we've written about it separately — what to do after a car accident in Waco and our car accident injuries page.
Migraines. These are different, and we want to be straight with you about them. Migraines involve more than mechanics — light and sound sensitivity, nausea, visual changes, sometimes a genuine warning phase beforehand. We don't treat migraines and we don't claim to cure them. What we can say is that some people with migraines find neck tension is one of the things that sets one off, and that when the neck settles down, they get fewer of them. That's worth investigating. It is not a promise, and we'd rather work alongside your neurologist or family doctor than pretend to replace them.
"Are you going to crack my neck?"
Most of the time, no. Our primary method is Torque Release Technique, where the adjustment comes from a small handheld instrument — a quick, light tap on one specific segment. No twisting, no sudden movement, no hands wrenching your head around. That's what most of our patients get, most of the time.
Manual adjustments are used when a patient's situation calls for it. Either way, we'll explain what we're doing and why before we do it, and nothing happens on your first visit regardless — day one is the evaluation. If the cracking question is what's kept you from going to a chiropractor, we've written about it: does your back really need to crack?
What we check before we touch anything
The neck is not a place to guess. So we don't.
We ask first, at length. When the headaches started. How many days a week. Where they sit — front, back, one side, behind an eye. What you've already tried, what worked, what didn't. Whether anything's changed lately: a new job, a new desk, a wreck, a fall, a new pillow. This part isn't a formality. Most of what points us in the right direction comes out of this conversation.
Digital X-rays, on site. These show the curve and alignment of your neck — whether it has the gentle forward curve it's supposed to have, or whether it's flattened or reversed, which is common in people who spend their days looking down. We take these here, so there's no second appointment somewhere else. We don't take X-rays during pregnancy.
An INSiGHT nervous system scan. This measures the muscle tension and nerve activity along your spine, including the segments at the top of your neck. It's how we see whether the area we suspect is actually irritated, rather than assuming it because that's where you're pointing.
Then we sit down and show you what we found, in plain language, before anyone recommends anything. Plan for about an hour, and if we don't think we can help your headaches, we'll say so then and tell you who might. Here's the full first-visit walkthrough.
What treatment actually looks like
The adjustment. If the top of your neck has stiffened up, Torque Release — our primary method — restores motion to the specific segments that need it, low-force and instrument-delivered. That's the core of it. For a lot of people with tension and neck-driven headaches, this is the piece that does the work.
Cervi-Trac decompression, when the problem is pressure rather than stiffness. Some neck problems aren't about a stiff joint or a tight muscle. They're about something pressing — a bulging or herniated disc in the neck, or a nerve pinched between two vertebrae. That's a different problem and it needs a different tool. Cervi-Trac is the neck version of our spinal decompression system, built specifically for the cervical spine. You sit in it — no straps, no restraints, nothing face-down — and it applies gentle, computer-controlled traction that opens up space between the vertebrae and takes the pressure off the disc and the nerve. Sessions run about twelve minutes with no downtime, usually as a short series over several weeks.
To be precise about what that does: decompression treats the neck problem underneath, not the headache itself. But if a compressed disc or nerve in your neck is what's been generating your headaches, that's the thing worth treating. Unlike shockwave, decompression is something we bill to insurance, and we'll check your benefits during the evaluation rather than after. If you want the longer version, we've written one: what is spinal decompression?
Shockwave therapy, when the muscles need their own attention. Sometimes the joints are moving fine again and the muscles across the base of the skull, the neck, and the shoulders are still knotted up and still generating headaches. That's when we add focused shockwave therapy — a handheld device that sends gentle acoustic waves into the tight tissue to help it release. It feels like firm tapping, takes ten to fifteen minutes, and there's no downtime afterward. It's usually an out-of-pocket add-on rather than an insurance-covered service, and we'll tell you the cost before you commit to it.
The boring part that matters. Where your monitor sits. How high your chair is. What you do with your phone in the evening. Which pillow you sleep on. We'll go through the specific things in your day that keep re-irritating the same spot, because if those don't change, we're just resetting something that gets undone every week.
And what we won't do: tell you to stop taking your medication. That conversation belongs to you and the doctor who prescribed it. Our aim is to deal with a possible source, so that reaching for something becomes less of a daily habit. What you do with that is between you and your physician.
When a headache isn't a chiropractic problem
Most headaches are not dangerous. A few are, and those need an emergency room rather than us. Go get seen immediately if you have:
- A headache that comes on instantly and violently — the worst of your life, full intensity within a minute or two
- A headache with a fever and a stiff neck you can't bend forward
- A headache after a blow to the head, especially with confusion, vomiting, or drowsiness
- A headache alongside weakness, numbness, slurred speech, drooping on one side of the face, or changes in your vision
- A brand-new kind of headache if you're over 50, or a long-standing headache that has clearly changed its pattern
We would much rather you go to the ER and be told it's nothing than sit in our waiting room with something that needed a hospital. And if a headache turns out to be driven by something outside our scope, we'll tell you and point you toward the right person. That's not us losing a patient. That's the job.
Seeing patients from across Waco and the surrounding area
We're at 5201 Bosque Blvd, Suite 240, in Waco — easy to reach from Woodway, Hewitt, China Spring, Robinson, Lorena, McGregor, Bellmead, and Bosqueville. We're open Monday, Wednesday and Thursday from 9:30 to 1 and again from 3 to 6, Tuesday mornings from 9:30 to 1, and closed Friday through Sunday.
We're in network with BCBS, Medicare, and UnitedHealthcare, and we offer cash-pay and care plans if you're not covered. No referral needed — you can book directly. If you're unsure whether your plan covers this, call us at (254) 265-7007 and we'll check before you come in.
Come find out where your headaches are actually coming from
If you've been managing headaches for months or years, the most useful thing you can do is stop guessing about the cause. One evaluation tells you whether your neck is part of the picture — and if it is, that's something with a plan attached to it rather than something to keep enduring.
You can read more about our approach on our headache relief page, or about the neck itself on our neck pain page. When you're ready, book your first visit or call (254) 265-7007. We'll take an hour, look properly, and tell you honestly what we find.